criticizing israel takes some Chutzpah, because the
only model that many of its citizens and friends have for
defense is attack. This starts with words, and slips rapidly
into actions, and shows an amazing lack of adaptability. While one understands
the historical reasons for dropping the fatal passivity that led many to the gas chambers
of the nazis, there are alternatives to simply assaulting the person who has another viewpoint
in this world - I wonder how long it will take for the culture, which has had several generations
now since the 2nd world war, to develop a bit more range of response.Of course, the large numbers of
people from other cultures without any real culture (viz escapees from the collapsing ussr)
that exploited the right of return don't help as their model of the world doesn't include any
idea of society let alone multi-cultural society. Tolerance, integration, cooperation, co-existence,
all sorts of ways for differing groups to live side by side have been tried succesfully (visit Toronto if you want to see one of the widest range of peacefullly co-existing groups - entire cities-worth of Chinese, Russiam, Italian and so on with many different styles of interaction).
In the long run, the survival of the once radical society in israel depends on the evolution towards some of these capabilities - but there's little signs of this - the current trend reminds me of Harry Harrison's
doomed inhabitants of the deadly planet in Deathworld...read it and weep...
Of course, I get shouted at by israelis every time I say this sort of thing, but I am used to this and have learned to ignore it - like many essentially arab socieities, the jews have only 1 volume setting: loud:-(
